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Tom Cruise An Unauthorized Biography ( PDFDrive )
Confidential. Certainly Drabinsky was more enthusiastic about the movie and
Tom’s input than the actor himself. “He was terrific,” he says. “Respectful, hardworking, and humble, with a very professional approach on set.” As in his school days, however, trouble had a way of finding Tom. When a late-night fight broke out near his trailer on the set of Losin’ It, rather than call for assistance, he tried to break up the brawl himself. He later claimed that he “nearly got killed.” As the actor held down one guy, he kept dodging his pumping fist, and it was only after members of the crew heard the shouting and came to help that they discovered that the thug was trying to hit Tom with an ice pick. Even after film production moved from the border town of Calexico back to Los Angeles, Tom got himself into more scrapes. He was apparently threatened with a gun when he and several members of the film’s production team visited the infamous Lingerie Club on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. The young actor was dancing with an attractive Asian girl while some crew members were drinking at the bar. The next thing they knew, she had pulled a gun on her dance partner. “We grabbed Tommy and got the hell outta that club as fast as possible,” an anonymous cast member told writer Wesley Clarkson. Later that year, when Tom headed back east to meet up with his Glen Ridge buddies, his roving eye nearly cost him his career. Tom and his friends Michael LaForte and Vinnie Travisano were out barhopping in Manhattan and ended up at the Ritz nightclub, which then hosted hip-hop bands like Rock Steady Crew and Bow Wow Wow. As was his wont, Tom started trying to pick up every girl in the joint. He was hitting on two girls at the bar, oblivious to the fact that they were with a couple of unamused muscle men. Vinnie saw one guy reach into his pocket and slip brass knuckles on his hand, ready to punch the budding movie star. Michael and Vinnie intervened and hustled their friend out of harm’s way. “We always used to say that we had saved his career because we saved his beautiful teeth,” recalls Vinnie. Indeed, Tom’s career was nearly over before it had begun. When Drabinsky tried to sell his movie, he found the studios cool to hostile. Fox Studios had first option on the film, but when Fox’s vice chairman Norman Levy sat through a screening, his verdict was damning. He hated the film. Nor did he have kind words for Tom Cruise. He told Drabinsky bluntly: “The film will never sell and Tom Cruise will not be an important actor.” Understandably, Drabinsky has never forgotten that meeting—or the verdict on Tom Cruise. At the time the idea of a sequel was out of the question. What saved his career was the release of Taps just before Christmas 1981, several months before the disastrous Losin’ It came out. While the movie opened to cool critical notices, it made money, attracting the notoriously fickle youth market and earning plaudits for the central performances of Tim Hutton and Sean Penn. Although Tom passed unnoticed when he attended his first black-tie gala premiere, joining Hollywood notables like Michael Douglas and Ali MacGraw as well as fellow cast members at the AVCO movie theater in Westwood, Los Angeles, his portrayal of the psychotic David Shawn did create something of a stir among Hollywood insiders. The director and writer Cameron Crowe identified the buzz around the young actor at a party for the film version of his book Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which propelled Sean Penn to stardom. “The legend of Taps was in the air,” he recalled. “Sean and Tom had acquired these reputations. Sean was sort of Sean De Niro, this character actor extreme. Tom had both moves, character, and leading man. He was The Guy.” At that time The Guy was still licking his professional wounds after the creative train wreck that was Losin’ It. The experience taught the nineteen-year- old a degree of humility. Even though the film put his name up in lights, he realized how inexperienced he was. “I had been offered some lead roles, but I didn’t feel that I could carry a film,” he said of this period in his career. “I hadn’t learned enough and I felt that I would be eaten alive to try and carry a movie by himself.” Not for the first time, however, fortune smiled on the young man. When he heard that Francis Ford Coppola, the genius behind The Godfather, was casting for a screen version of S. E. Hinton’s best-selling book about teenage life, The Outsiders, Tom was determined to hustle for a role. At the auditions he literally pulled Coppola aside and told him, “I’ll do anything it takes; I’ll play any role in this.” His tactics paid off: Tom was offered the small Download 1.37 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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